The greatest feat achieved by manager is to have given his rising stars a
licence to thrill

Greg Dyke’s message after England had qualified for Brazil 2014 was a simple one. “Let’s not get too carried away,” the chairman of the Football Association said in a radio interview on Wednesday morning.

Well, good luck with that one, Mr Dyke. If there is one thing we in England are masters of it is getting carried away. The moment we have a sniff of an international tournament, we are world champions of the art, every couple of years succumbing en masse to the intoxicating lure of absurdly over-wrought expectation.

And yet, at the risk of breaching the Dyke edict, there is one area in which we might have legitimate cause for hope for next summer. For sure, England are not going to win the World Cup. In truth this team will be lucky to progress even to the level of their predecessors, losing in the quarter-finals on penalties. But, however far they get, maybe this time they will not stink the place out.

England have not illuminated a World Cup since 1990. Worse than that, every tournament since they have performed with all the zest and panache of a rotting cabbage. In South Africa in 2010 they conspired with Algeria to deliver quite the most miserable exhibition of football ever offered up in a finals. As everyone who sat through the misery of Cape Town will concur, it would have been better had they not qualified at all.

This time, though, there are hints that they have within them the power to do something considerably more elevated. Against Montenegro and Poland, the team played with what appeared to be a level of enjoyment bordering on the carefree. Andros Townsend, skipping down the wing time and again (albeit it against opponents who would struggle to tie down a starting role in the Championship), spoke afterwards of how he was living the dream every time he pulled on a white jersey.

This is not how it has been for the previous 24 years. What is normally associated with that England top is fear. Wearing three lions on the chest has usually produced a debilitating accretion of nerves. Players who excel with their club teams are diminished by elevation to the national side; shrinking, rather than rising, to the occasion.

But on Friday and Tuesday at Wembley, the forward line in particular sparkled with ingenuity and invention. Even Wayne Rooney – who had looked most disturbed by the Cape Town farrago four years ago, leaving the pitch snarling at the England supporters – appeared delighted when he scored. It was as if the street footballer that had long been lurking within had suddenly been liberated. He seemed – whisper it – as if he were having fun.

For sure, there are still deficiencies in this England team. In defence, in ball retention, in the ability to control momentum for 90 minutes they fall way short of world class. But at least now they look as though they are playing with a degree of enjoyment, doing things which were way beyond their immediate predecessors, such as dribbling and taking opponents on.

Townsend, Rooney and the Daniels Sturridge and Welbeck finally have the appearance of a bunch who might be able to play at a level greater than the sum of their parts. For as long as most of us can remember the England team have been a woeful personification of the opposite.

That the careful, cautious Roy Hodgson, a man more used to preaching the value of patience, should be responsible for this happy-go-lucky mindset is the most surprising aspect of this emerging new order. We thought we had seen the true Hodgson reveal himself in the grind of that grim goalless draw in Kiev last month.

But he is nothing if not pragmatic. And this past week he has taken the material available to him and used it appropriately. Thus he has unleashed Townsend and Leighton Baines, linked Sturridge with Rooney, given licence to natural exuberance.

Between now and Brazil there is plenty that could go wrong. Injuries, exhaustion and over-use will all take their toll. But in addition to those who shone at Wembley this past week, Hodgson has in reserve Jack Wilshere, Ross Barkley, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, even Ravel Morrison, players who share the same vibrancy. We have long craved a coherent pattern of playing for the England team, a stamp of continuity.

Maybe what we saw in the last two qualifiers was the emergence of a potential pattern. It will not be enough to win the World Cup. But at least it has the possibility of cheering us all up.